Community Engagement Obligations and draft large land holdings guidance under the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2025– Consultation paper

Worked Example

1: Mairi checks if she has a large land holding

In this worked example, Mairi is trying to confirm if she has a large land holding.

Step 1: Making a list of owned land

First, Mairi makes a list of the land she owns.

Step 2: Check which areas of land are close together

Mairi consults the boundary information for her land and makes a note of distances between the different areas:

Mairi’s conclusions:

• A, B, C, D and F are all contiguous with at least one other area
• E is not contiguous with any of the other land

Step 3: Group land into holdings

Mairi would consider the information from step 1 and 2 and use this to group land into single holdings.

Mairi’s conclusions:

• A, B and C have the same owner (Mairi) and form a contiguous area
• D and E have the same owners (Mairi and Aisha) but are not contiguous with each other
• There are no other areas with the same ownership as F so it can’t be combined with anything else

Step 4: Check if single holdings can be combined

Mairi’s conclusions:

• Mairi is an owner of all four single holdings.
• All single holdings except Single Holding E are contiguous.
• They can be grouped together into Composite Holding ABCDF.

Step 5: Check connections to other people or organisations

As Mairi is associated with organisations which own land, she seeks appropriate advice.

Mairi’s conclusions:

• she is connected to Company Green (a company she controls).
• She is also connected to LLP Yellow (a partnership she controls)
• Mairi now knows she must check if any land owned by these connected entities is close to Composite Holding ABCDF.

Step 6: Adding land owned by connected persons

Mairi would consider the connections she identified at step 5 and make a list of land they own. She would check if any land owned by these connections is contiguous with the composite holding that she identified at Step 4.

Mairi’s conclusions:

• Area H meets both tests:
  • It is owned by a company connected to Mairi
  • It is contiguous (within 250 metres of the composite holding)
• Area H is added to the composite holding – which becomes Composite Holding ABCDFH

Step 7: Repeating for nearby land

Mairi checks her list of land owned by connections again to see if any of it is close enough to the new composite holding.

Area I is still not contiguous, so the final composite holding is made up of holdings ABCDFH.

Step 8: Adding up the total area

To check the area of composite holding ABCDFH, Mairi adds up the sizes of all of the land within it.

Mairi’s conclusions:

• The composite holding is 1,170 hectares.
• Because this is more than 1,000 hectares, Mairi has a large land holding.